Chinese Steamed Chicken Recipe

I have made this steamed chicken recipe several times this summer. Steaming is a really popular cooking method in every Chinese kitchen. Steamed dishes are simple, quick and always tender in texture. For poached version, please check white cut chicken.

This is ginger and green onion steamed chicken with my own tested dipping sauce. People in Guangdong and Guangxi province love to serve this chicken directly since the steamed chicken keeps the natural taste of a high quality chicken. During my high school time, I love to dip to some chili powder directly. You decide your way.

Preparation:

Spread the marinating sauce evenly on the cleaned chicken—every place. Put ginger and green onion shreds on top and marinating at least for 30 minutes. If you are not in hurry, I would suggest preparing the chicken in the morning and making this as lunch or dinner.

Steaming tips:

When cooking steamed rice with electric cooker, I always love to steam some fresh vegetable or meat with the inside steamer. This method is highly recommend to simply the process and save energy.

Clean the chicken and then spread the marinating sauce evenly on both sides.

Lay ginger shreds and green onion shreds over to marinate at least 30 minutes. Then place in your steamer. I am using the steamer of my electric rice cooker. If you are using a steamer with wok or pot, steam with high fire around 20 to 30 minutes until soft (or you can easily insert a chop sticker in). Transfer out and cut into chunks of your favorite size. Decorate with green onions.

Dipping sauce

In a sauce pan, heat up 1 tablespoon sesame oil and stir fry chopped garlic and green onion until aroma. And then add oyster sauce, light soy sauce and water. Mix well and bring all the content to a boiling. Transfer to dipping bowl and cool down a little bit.

My husband is northern chinese and he and his family are FUSSY when it comes to foreigners (me) cooking chinese food. I made this and Bam! Instant respect ? thanks alot, I will make this recipe forever now

I’ve tried your recipe, really simple but very good. I’ve manage to get the juicy chicken. But what I don’t understand is why in your picture the steamed chicken is kinda yellowish on the skin whole mine is really plain white. Did you add something aside from the marinade recipe you wrote? Also I marinade the chicken 30 minutes but it came out not salty enough. Should I add more time to marinade it?

Hi Zelig,
I believe the color is bought by the soy sauce. If you want a dark color, you can use dark soy sauce. Besides, if you want to have a stronger taste, you can poke some small holes before marinating and lengthen the marinating time. It tastes fine for me when served with the dip.

Need your advice on the steaming. I usually steam using a small metal bowl and put on a wok and cover it up. After 30 minutes I tend to get the metal bowl is filled with steamed water and the chicken is submerged in it. I may lose all the flavor of marination , diluted in the bowl and I have to discard the juice and the fluid away. Is there any method that I could do to prevent it? Similar to steaming fish with ginger and scallion, the steamed water fills my fish bowl. Please advice. Thanks Regards Siva

Hi Siva,
I believe the problem is your wok and the lid. For example I am using rice cooker steamer or metal steamer, the lids for those equipments can drainage the vapour to the edges and keep the dish almost dry. Besides, you still need to wait for several minutes before opening the lid, allowing the vapour dropping down.

This has become a recipe our family enjoys very regularly. We love it! Thank you for your recipes which are so delicious … your photos are amazing, which makes them a delight to cook! With the dipping sauce, I add a bit of lime juice …. we find it just adds another level of flavour.

Thank you very much for yoir recipe. I have a metal pot steamer & like Siva Nathan, after steaming, the bowl of chicken filled up with the steam water & the chicken is drowned in the water. How do I solve this problem?

This is Mary again. Thank you very much, Elaine, for your reply and your advice. Instead of covering with a plastic cover can I cover with aluminum foil or parchment paper? Or can I simply cover it with a plate? What is silver paper? Will the plastic cover melt while steaming?
Thank you once again for the delicious recipe. My family love it & I’m going to cook it again for my daughter tomorrow. Thanks a zillion😋😘.

I actually don’t use the dipping sauce and just spread the marinate sauce over my steam rice. Simpler and still very tasteful. I also steam Chinese mushrooms with it. Do you cut a chicken Chinese style first or just use bought chicken parts. If you use a whole chicken, do you cut it first or steam it as a whole chicken and then cut it?

I suggest cut chicken into larger pieces to flat them because steaming is slightly different from poaching. Then cut the large pieces into serving sizes after steaming. But it is ok to cut the chicken firstly before steaming.

Chinese Pantry

ChinaSichuanFood.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
All images & content are copyright protected. Please do not use only images without prior permission. 图片和文字未经授权，禁止转载和使用。